"It's a house, it's a house!" cried Grace thankfully, as they hurried
after the little man. "I guess somebody will have to wring me out when
we get inside. I'm soaked through!"
"Goodness, why don't you tell us something we don't know?" grumbled
Mollie, but nobody was listening to her. They had reached the house
and the man had swung the door open hospitably.
"Step inside, step inside, do," he urged with a nervous gesture that
reminded the girls once more of the proverbial hen. "You will find it
dry at least, and I will have a fire for you in a hurry. Just a moment
till I get some wood-- just a moment----"
And while he rambled on, suiting his words with quick nervous action,
the girls crowded inside the cottage and looked about them curiously.
The room they had entered was large and scrupulously neat. At first
glance it seemed a queer combination of hunting lodge and museum of
natural history. The rough clapboards and beams of the ceiling and
walls had never been plastered, and this very crudity seemed somehow
to give the room an air of warmth and homelikeness that was very
inviting.
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